


Demons long fought

by Shinosuke



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Dealing with the loss of a magical dreamforest, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Loss, M/M, Nightmares, Ronan is a sweetheart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 22:11:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10671780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shinosuke/pseuds/Shinosuke
Summary: Adam once said he couldn't kill Ronans demons. What bothers Ronan more is that he also could never kill Adams.





	Demons long fought

Adam was awake long before the alarm would go off. He tilted his head to the right, pushed down his pillow to take a look at the clock and closed his eyes as he read the time. 6:22. He had precisely 23 minutes until he would have to get up and ready for the day at school, so he stayed in bed and recalled the images and feelings from the dream he just had woken up from. They were already fading, but he remembered Ronan. He remembered his hands around Ronan's neck. Then he remembered Glendower. He remembered feeling free. Those images didn’t make a lot of sense to him, but they sent a cold flash down his spine and Adam tried to get a closer look, but the memories from the dream slipped from his hands the more he tried.

  
Eventually, he gave up. The weird feeling of the dream faded and what was left was the numbness of just another morning Adam was very much used to. Another year, he always told himself. Just another year.  
Adam decided he wouldn’t make any use of delaying the day, so he got up, his body as light as if he’d slept just enough. He turned off the alarm to stop it from going off in… five minutes ago. He had laid there chasing the dream for almost half an hour and the alarm had betrayed him. The sun was already up and filling his room with golden light. Was is really morning? Adam shielded his eyes from the light as he heard heavy footsteps coming closer.

Just like that he was a child again. Robert Parrish opened the door to Adam's bedroom and his menacing presence made Adam feel small and vulnerable again. Unprotected. Insignificant, but his father looked relaxed. “You’ll be late.”, he said. “Go take a shower.”

Adam nodded. “Sorry.”, he said. His father left and Adam started growing again. There was something different about him, but he didn’t let it bother him. He took his uniform, a fresh pair of boxers and socks and headed for the bathroom.

After breakfast, he gathered his bag and left the double-wide trailer at the end of the long dirtroad. “Have a good day.”, his mother wished him on his way out and Adam flashed her a smile before he pulled the door shut. The long road was empty, the other trailers seemed to be ages away. Adam didn’t look at them, he knew they were there, but when he retrieved his bike from behind the small house, the trailers were gone. Hidden behind the early morning fog and the trees and beams of blinding, golden light.

Adam didn’t mind. He didn’t want to see them, now they were gone. One day, he would be, too.

The further Adam drove, the more the landscape changed. He never reached the town and his surroundings got wilder. Fences started disappearing, street lights turned into trees and when the fog cleared under a grey sky, Adam realized the road had ended. He didn’t look back to see where it had become the plain field he was now biking across. He didn’t have the time as he lost control over his bike, the wheels started twitching, trying to steady themselves on the uneven ground, failing miserably.

Adam jumped off in the last second, putting both feet on the ground, not loosening the grip around the handlebar. He had to hold on to the bike at once to keep his balance and to prevent it from breaking. He would be lost without it, he knew that. The bike stopped at once and hit him hard in the leg. Adam sucked in a sharp breath and closed his eyes for a moment, bending over to compensate the pain.  
Once, twice he breathed, to get himself back on track and when he opened his eyes, his bike was gone. So was the field. The trees that had lurked in the far distance had somehow caught up to him. Adam flinched back, stumbling over a root, suddenly sitting on the ground. A high pitched noise got louder and louder in his left ear, while Adam looked around, trying to process what was going on and where he was.

Cabeswater, it struck him. The forest reacted to his thought and a cold breeze started swirling up fallen autumn-leaves from the ground around Adam. The noise in his ear had by now risen to a painful scream and Adam tried to cover his ear with his hand.

“Make it stop!”, he begged the forest, but another cold blow was the only answer. “Cabeswater, you’re hurting me!” The leaves started circling him, closing in on him with every round they made.

Adam heard the soft voices of the trees through the brushing of the leaves and the deafening roar in his left ear. His vision blurred and his hands were shaking. “I can’t hear you! What do you want from me?!”, he screamed, trying to out-shout the storm he was caught in, but it was no use. “Cabeswater, please!”, he begged again. Through the flying leaves, he saw a tree falling. The ground shook as it hit the floor and Adam felt a sting in his heart. Then another. And another. The wind went faster, throwing the leaves and now little twigs at Adam's face, so he covered it with his right arm. He kept his left hand still pressed to his ear, although it didn’t keep the noise out. In a desperate attempt to protect himself against Cabeswaters attack, he pulled his knees close and pressed his face to them. He felt another tree fall, felt a sharp sting when a leave slightly cut into his arm and the sound around him made him want to throw up.

“Stop!”, he shouted in a last attempt and with this, it got quiet around him.

  
Adam's whole body trembled, as he realized Cabeswater was gone. He knew that it was gone because of him and that it had lashed out at him, trying to take him with it. He felt guilty and lost.  
And he was scared of what he might see, when he lifted his head and opened his eyes, so he didn’t move. He knew, he had to eventually and he wouldn’t be Adam Parrish if he didn’t lift his gaze to the future he was working so hard for, but he stayed all curled up on the cold, hard floor. Only when he realized, that this wasn’t the earthy forest-ground he was sitting on, did he dare moving again. He lowered his hands until they touched even stones and in that moment, the sounds came back. Adam flinched at the students’ voices and shoes and phones all around him and lifted his head to find himself in an Aglionby-hallway.

His heart and breath were racing against each other and Adam didn’t know which one to calm down first. He also wasn’t sure how to do any of that, actually. When he looked around, it felt like it always did. The students of Aglionby Academy running around with their heads held high by their parents’ money and Adam was sitting on the cold hard floor, barely at eye-level with their knees. He felt the weight of their ignorance, of their complete unawareness of him, pulling him down, pushing him into curling back up, but he knew better.

Adam took a deep breath and convinced his body into standing up. His knees were weaker than his breath seemed to be, but he stood. Just to be immediately pushed to the side. Adam stumbled to the wall, almost glad to have something he could lean against, when he turned around to see who had pushed him. Chaotic blonde hair, angry, hollow eyes and a smashed-in cheek. “Noah.”, he whispered as he recognized him.

Noah didn’t move. He just stared at Adam with a gaze that made the temperature in the classroom they were now standing in drop more, the longer Adam could bear to look. It took him all he left of his nerves to maintain the eye-contact, although it was frighteningly fascinating, seeing Noah, sweet, shy Noah so full of anger and hatred.

“What’s wrong?” Adam had finally found his voice again and it startled him as much as Noahs slight movement. His friend tilted his chin slightly up, giving Adam an even better angle to see where Whelk had smashed in his cheek.

“You are.”, he answered.

Adam swallowed hard, he pressed himself closer to the wall he held onto with desperate fear. He couldn’t breathe. “Why?” His question sounded like he choked on it. He felt hands tightening around his neck, but there was nobody he could push away, while his own hands mimicked the movement of strangling someone. “Noah, what’s wrong with me?”, he begged, losing the strength to stand, but he didn’t fall. The invisible hands kept him up, forcing him to fight for every breath.

With every blink, the scenery became more unclear. Noah stepped slowly towards him, the hole on his cheek slowly shrinking to a distant smudge, slowly fainting to completely untouched skin. Adam's hands shook with force, but he couldn’t lift them up to protect him. He didn’t know how to protect himself against invisible hands and Noah to begin with.

Suddenly, Noah was right in front of him, his even, soft face had turned into a furious, violent mask. “Noah!”, Adam cried out with the last breath of air he had, but Noah didn’t even seem to hear him. He just grabbed Adam's arms and pulled him away from the wall.

“It should have been you!”, he screamed with a voice Adam had never heard before and just a split-second before he hit the classroom floor, he woke up.

Adam could still feel the hands around his neck like they had burned him, but they hadn’t. He still could hardly breathe, but it got easier the longer he tried, although his face was buried in Ronan's shirt and he refused to pull back. Ronan had his arms wrapped around Adam, who only then realized, that his whole body was trembling. He also felt, how tightly he had clawed his fingers into Ronan's shirt and that he still felt like they were strangling someone. His body was as cold as ice where Ronan didn’t touch him, but he was covered in sweat and he heard nothing but his heartbeat and the blood rushing in his good ear.

Slowly, Adam started to catch his breath again. He didn’t stop shivering, but he managed to relax his hands a little. It took another few unsteady breaths, until he heard Ronan's voice. He wasn’t talking. He wasn’t saying Adams name or telling him that it was just a dream and that everything would be alright like people did on tv. He was humming an irish tune Adam had heard him sing when they explored the cave in Cabeswater and Ronan was to keep track of the time.

Adam didn’t move. He listened to Ronan's song, concentrating on his boyfriend's hands on his back and the slight movement of his thumbs, sending comforting heatwaves through Adam's whole body and by that eventually calming him down. The images of the nightmare started to fade, the sharp pain of Cabeswater dying, of Noah attacking him, the burning hands clasped tightly around his neck disappeared and with one more deep breath, Adam finally let go of Ronan.

It was still dark and Adam couldn’t see much of Ronan's face, but he saw the concern anyway. He heard it, when Ronan asked him “Better?”

Adam nodded carefully. “Yeah, better.”, he whispered, trying out if he could speak normally after what the invisible hands had done to him. He could.

“Are you okay?”, Ronan asked as softly as Adam had replied. He sounded just like when he was talking to a wild animal he didn’t want to scare away. Maybe he was, Adam thought. He took his time and didn’t answer immediately. Was he okay? He considered what he had lived through in his dream and he knew that all he’d seen were demons he had been battling for a while now, but it was just a dream. Here, now, they couldn’t get to him and he knew that.

“I think I am.”, he said. A little louder this time, sounding more like himself again. Ronan didn’t miss the change of his tone and let out a relieved sigh. “Did I wake you up?”, Adam asked, but Ronan shook his head.

“Wasn’t sleeping anyway.”, he said.

Adam nodded and pushed himself closer to Ronan again. “Okay. Let’s change that.”

Ronan smirked, Adam could hear it in his voice when he answered “Why? Didn’t look like much fun to me, when you were doing it.”

A little laugh escaped Adam's mouth. “Asshole.”, he said. Ronan pulled him closer and kissed his forehead.

“Loser.”, he replied, his voice dripping of the confident, satisfied smile that came from having made Adam laugh.

“Thanks.”, Adam said and he meant it.

“Anytime.”, Ronan answered and he meant it.


End file.
